Survivor

CBS hit it big with this show. "Survivor" was the best show of Summer 2000, probably the best show of 2000 all together. It was all anyone was talking about. I never missed an episode and each week was amazing! There were twists and turn at every end, you had no idea who was going to get voted off or win the million! The show is so great, from the games, to the interviews, to the voting, which was always the best! An amazing show that will go down in television history! I can't wait for Survivor II.

So last night's tribal council was ridiculous. Drea (who's black) shows up with her group at the 2nd tribal and sees 2 black players sitting in the jury box and she basically has a meltdown that turns into a big scene because she thinks that the first 2 people to be voted off being black was so racial. Only problem is, though they were the first 2 in the jury, they were NOT the first 2 to be voted off! The first ones to be voted off were as follows: voted off Survivor 42 in Week 6? - Lydia Meredith - White voted off Survivor 42 in Week 5? - -Daniel Strunk - White Week 4? - Swati Goel - Black?

Week 3 - Jenny Kim - Asian Week 2 - Marya Sherron - Brown Week 1 - Zach Wurtenberger - White

But once again Jeff wimps out and goes PC and says nothing about this, and neither does anyone else! Unbelievable!

'nuff said!

Survivor was my favorite show for years for these reasons:

• A clever social game: Vote people out and somehow still convince them to give you a million dollars, how do you do that.

• The survival elements: How do modern-world people deal with lack of food and sleep deprivation, and hard physical labor.

• The challenges: Throughout the years they introduced many great challenges that require a diverse skill set. Sometimes it's physical strength, sometimes it's ingenuity or remembrence, sometimes pure willpower. Among my favorites were when players had to build a shelter and a local juror decided which was best (Boston Rob won I think), or one time they had to build a raft that could float on water.

Also, it's family-friendly and my wife and I were looking forward to sharing the Survivor experience with our kids.

But now I'm watching season 41 and there's hardly anything left of the trademark elements that made Survivor this great show:

• Challenges: All are now basically "some parcours with a puzzle at the end" (for teams) and "stand on a platform and balance stuff" (for individual immunity). No diversity, none of the great challenges from previous seasons. Extremely boring to the point where I just fast-forward to see who won.

• Survival: You hardly see players search for food or build shelters anymore. They keep saying they're food-deprevated but somehow it doesn't show. Either the new players are all Bear Gryllz or it has gotten softer as compared with previous seasons where players lost dozens of pounds and sometimes quit because they couldn't take it.

• Social game: It's still the same game but the original strategies that used to be played are now buried under a pile of advantages and idols and idol-nullifiers and super-idols and what not. On top of that, everything now centers around race and identity in Season 41 to the point where players cry about voting someone else out because they have the same racial background, really? It's the 21st century and we're going back to using race and ethnicity as the primal characteristic to judge people? I'm not from the US and I could relate to all sorts of players of different backgrounds throughout the years but this is the exact opposite of inclusiveness that we're seeing right now.

Such a shame that it came to this, they should have canceled after season 40 and be done with it. I won't watch season 42.

I've heard about this show for year, but never had the time to watch until now. I retired a few weeks ago and I've been looking over my lists of things I've meant to do for so long. Well, watching Survivor was definitely one of the things on my list. I gotta say that I have not be disappointed. I love watching the alliances and the voting. The challenges are really exciting. The island is amazing to see. My only problem is that some of the backstabbing seems a little meanspirited at times. But I guess they are playing for a lot of money, so all if fair in love and war. I can't wait to watching more seasons!

Even though I watch too much television, it's rare for me to become addicted to any show. This is a rare exception. Season one is now over, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. It's already one of my favorite programs of all-time, and even though I have doubts about how much I will like the next "Survivor" season, I'll always remember the first season as genuinely entertaining (and at times, riveting) television.

Oh, and the right person won, too!